The fields of telemedicine and home healthcare have experienced strong growth in recent years. In a telemedicine system, a patient is geographically removed from the presence of a doctor or other healthcare provider. For example, the patient could be at home instead of on site at a healthcare facility. Telemedical devices enable the healthcare provider to monitor the health status of a patient and potentially diagnose and treat some medical problems without the need for the patient to travel to the healthcare facility. The use of telemedical systems has the potential to reduce the cost of healthcare, and to improve the quality of healthcare through increased patient monitoring.
Various known telemedicine systems provide a device to a patient that enables the patient to transmit medical data to a doctor or healthcare provider. Some devices are configured to record biosignals, such as heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration rates, and transmit data of the recorded biosignals to a database for later review. Other telemedicine systems enable remote visits between a patient and a healthcare provider and also provide real time medical data to the provider during the visits.
While telemedicine systems have numerous potential advantages, such systems can also present challenges to the healthcare system. Telemedicine systems can increase healthcare costs in at least two different ways. First, the purchase and maintenance costs of the telemedical devices and associated communication infrastructure to support telemedicine contribute to the overall cost of telemedicine systems. Secondly, the amount of time that medical professionals spend analyzing medical data from telemedicine systems contributes to the cost of the telemedicine system and may take away resources from other medical services. Depending upon the medical condition of a patient, a telemedicine system may provide limited additional medical benefit in comparison to traditional treatments. However, when used appropriately, a telemedicine system can reduce the total cost of healthcare and improve the quality of healthcare for many patients. Existing telemedicine systems are, however, not well equipped to identify the patients that are most suitable to receive telemedicine treatment. Thus, improvements to medical systems that help identify patients for telemedical devices would be beneficial.